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“Please sit down first. On that chair, the one on top of the fluffy rug - just incase. Thanks. That’s better. Actually- wait, wait, wait, no- I changed my mind. This is a bad idea. Tell Allison you changed your mind. You’re high, you shouldn’t be holding a baby. You’re going to drop her on her head. I can’t watch this, it’s killing me - and I’m already dead. You’ll drop her so hard she’ll bounce. You shouldn’t be lying about this, you selfish dic-”
Approaching her brother to hand Claire to, Allison wondered why he looked a second away from a stress induced aneurysm. Maybe he was just like this sober, she hadn’t actually met a sober Klaus for the entirety of their adult lives. She wasn’t even sure if she’d seen him sober since they were children. It meant a lot to Allison that he would get clean to meet Claire, she just didn’t feel comfortable having him around her high. “Are you okay?” Allison tentatively asked, pausing on passing Claire over to him for now. “I’m good, I’m great, just... a headache.” Klaus explained unconvincingly. “A really goddamn annoying headache, that won’t leave me alone for one single minute.” he complained with a scowl, which didn’t instil any further confidence in Allison.
“Do you want to hold her later when you’re feeling better?” Allison stared down to her mesmerising infant with overwhelming love. She was utterly terrified of letting Klaus hold her, he had always been unpredictable - even before the drugs. Allison was so dotingly protective of Claire that even Patrick holding her made her wide eyed. “No, no! I’m good, I swear. I really want to hold her.” Klaus pouted with disappointment, eagerly beckoning for Claire to be placed into his arms. “Okay, just... make sure you support her head.” Allison cautiously instructed as she nervously transferred over the love of her life.
“Holy shit, she makes you look ugly!” Klaus whispered, entranced by his beautiful baby niece. “She does, doesn’t she?” Allison giggled softly, stroking at Claire’s wispy hair with adoration. Although he didn’t want to look away from little Claire, Klaus saw Ben dramatically phase into another area of the mansion from the corner of his eye. Klaus held back a sigh, not wanting Allison to become insulted thinking it was about Claire. It was clearly destroying his brother to not be involved. Klaus couldn’t even tell Allison that Ben was here, he’d burned those bridges a long time ago. When their brother had first died, Klaus had used him as an excuse for everything. ”Ben wants me to have this, Ben said you should give me that, Ben said I should be able to blah blah blah.” That was before Klaus even began constantly lying for money, it wasn’t any surprise none of them were willing to believe him.
“I know Ben would love her, if he were here...” Klaus murmured, supposing this was the nearest he could get to telling Allison. Ben definitely loved Claire, that was evident from him having a near panic attack about Klaus holding her. It was infuriating that he thought Klaus would be that selfish. He knew he was nowhere near high enough to accidentally bludgeon his niece, he wouldn’t hold her if that were the case. “We were gonna call her Ben, if she’d been a boy.” Allison glumly admitted, which made Klaus tear his eyes from his niece to melancholically frown at his sister. “He’d have liked that. I mean, I assume he’d have liked that.” he clumsily replied. Allison smiled gloomily, looking like tears were building in her eyes. Klaus sheepishly glanced back down to Claire, feeling guilty that he’d never actually lost Ben like they had. They deserved him more. “She’s prettier than you, but I’m still the prettiest.” he vainly quipped, wanting to quickly change the subject.
—
Being a ghost was extremely boring, but especially overnight. There was just nothing to do, Ben couldn’t even go and wander to a movie theatre or something - everywhere was closed. He’d been aimlessly pacing throughout Allison’s mansion all night and morning, trying to come up with a way to convince Klaus to tell Allison that he was a ghost. Their sister was under the false impression that Klaus was sober, a lie he’d come up with purely to be allowed near his newborn niece. Ben was wildly unhappy with that plan, but at least it meant there was a distinct chance Allison would believe Klaus about Ben. As far as Allison was aware, the drugs weren’t there to turn off Klaus’ power. Ben needed to take advantage of that, he probably wouldn’t get this opportunity again. It was likely also a matter of time before Allison realised he was lying, since Klaus was becoming rapidly complacent and putting much less effort in to hiding things.
“No! It never goes well, I’m not doing it again.” Klaus whisperingly declined, nervous of Allison or her husband hearing their chatter. Ben gave him the most pathetic pleading look Klaus had ever seen in his life. Klaus shoved his head into his hands and groaned, not feeling comfortable with doing this. “You know they get all pissy at me.” Klaus hissed, not wanting to deal with another Ben induced argument. “Yeah, and I know that’s hard...” Ben sauntered over to patronisingly crouch in front of his seat “...but you know whats harder? Being dead.” his brother passive aggressively smiled, going heavy handed on the guilt tripping.
“Oh, are you dead? I hadn’t noticed, it’s not like you bring it up all the fucking time!” Klaus sarcastically shout-whispered, disgruntled that his brother was manipulating him. Usually it was Klaus manipulating Ben, he didn’t like the shoe being on the other foot. Ben unnervingly stared him out, knowing Klaus would feel guilty about the dead card. “She’ll just think I’m really high, and then rumor me into some Hollywood rehab. I am not playing scrabble with Charlie Sheen!” Klaus shovelled several more pills into his mouth to deal with Ben’s barrage of nagging.
Patrick immediately walked backwards out of the room before Allison’s spooky brother could notice he’d entered. Why were her family so weird? “What did he do?” Allison groaned from behind him, making Patrick jump slightly - he was on edge from Klaus’ eerie presence. “Do you think our house is haunted?” he anxiously asked, peeping back around the corner as though he could suddenly see ghosts too. Klaus waved at him coyly, prompting Patrick to awkwardly wave back before ducking away again. Why did his hand say hello? “Does it matter?” his wife replied in a tone that was far too casual for what they were discussing. “Of course it matters! They’re creepy, Al!” Patrick could barely believe he was actually having to point that out. “They can’t do anything, they’re just...” Allison waved a hand around nonchalantly “...chilling.” Patrick furrowed his brow with disbelief.
“Chilling?” he repeated incredulously. Patrick ran a hand down his face, trying to calm himself down. He could feel himself growing goosebumps just from the idea of having ghosts in the house. “They’re fine, Patrick. They’re just people who’re... dead.” Allison shrugged, totally unbothered by the end of that sentence. “Exactly!” he exclaimed, staggered by her calmness. Even if she did grow up with this, surely she could see it was objectively macabre. A wash of relief suddenly hit Patrick, realising he’d just seen her brother guzzle down pills. “Wait, he can’t see the ghosts when he’s on drugs right?” Patrick checked, desperately wanting that to be the case. He wasn’t thrilled to have drugs in the house, but it was better than dead people.
“No, but he’s sobe...” Allison trailed off with a fierce frown when the look on Patrick’s face gave her all the information she needed to know. “The house isn’t haunted.” she angrily hissed to Patrick as she stormed past him towards her lying brother. “How’s sobriety?” Allison asked cheerily, wanting to make Klaus squirm. “It’s so great that I think being sober might just be my new high.” Klaus grinned in a way that he presumably felt looked angelic. “I’m glad you got sober to see Claire, it would’ve been too much of a risk otherwise. Anything could’ve happened to her.” Allison smirked with satisfaction when a guilty wince crossed her brother’s face. Klaus frantically shoved his fingers in his ears, anticipating what was clearly going to be her next move.
Usually Allison wanted to send him to rehab since he was obviously such a mess, but it was mostly just out of revenge this time. “Keep your vibrations out of my brain!” Klaus yelled dramatically, referring to the buzzing of Allison’s sound waves when she rumors people. “Keep your drugs out of my house!” Allison shouted back, fully aware how childish that comeback was. “I can’t hear you!” Klaus loudly informed her, still not unblocking his ears. Allison groaned with fury and marched to the guest room to gather her brother’s sparse possessions. She’d change his flight back home to as soon as possible. He wasn’t being around her precious daughter like this.
Shit, Klaus had more drugs in there. “Allie, lets just tone down the sass a notch. We can talk about things like adults.” he caught up with Allison, apprehensively uncovering his ears. Klaus was going to hurriedly plug them again if Allison so much as started a sentence beginning with I. “My name is Allison, you man-child!” His sister was fiercely shoving his things into his bag, turning to pointedly glower at him when she saw the pills. “They’re not mine, I don’t know how they got there. I’ve been framed!” Klaus unintentionally chuckled, wishing he wasn’t so high so he wouldn’t find this funny at the most inappropriate time. “I let you hold her like this!” Allison hissed, pettily batting at him like a cat. Klaus hastily grabbed the baggie in her distraction, worried about her vengefully flushing them.
“Are you serious?!” both Ben and Allison snapped at the same time. Klaus couldn’t hold back giggling at that, leading Allison’s batting to become less like a cat and more like a tiger. “They’re really-“ Klaus cowered from a series of smacks “-expensive, Allison!“ His sister practically growled with furious frustration. Her hot husband entered to diffuse the situation, pulling Allison back with great ease. “I think you should leave.” Patrick suggested coldly, still looking quite creeped out by Klaus being there. It was unbelievably tempting to tell him their dead brother was stood just behind him. “Can I say goodbye to Claire first?” Klaus pleaded to his sister, assuming he was never going to be allowed around her again after this disaster. “Fine.” Allison sighed, looking hurt and disillusioned.
Harshly handing over her brother’s backpack, Allison begrudgingly lead him towards Claire’s nursery. This was a messed up lie, even by Klaus’ standards. He could’ve easily dropped her, not to mention him bringing drugs into her home without her knowledge. TMZ would have a field day if anyone leaked it. Her upcoming projects might even fire her. What if someone reported her to CPS? Allison was probably going to have to rumor her staff into ignorance, just incase anyone heard this chaos unfolding.
“Can I have a minute alone with her?” Klaus requested with puppy dog eyes. Allison firmly shook her head. He was clearly far too high to be trusted alone with a newborn. “But how can I teach her to shoot up with you stood right there?” Klaus deadpanned, leaning over Claire’s crib with a wistful expression. Allison shook her head again, too annoyed to even speak to Klaus or acknowledge his tasteless joke. “Fine, stay. But... I need you to promise you’re not gonna rumor me into playing UNO with Charlie Sheen.”
Allison scrunched her face up with immense confusion, finding that an absolutely bizarre thing for Klaus to negotiate. She wasn’t sure how she was still able to be bewildered by his nonsense. “Why the hell would I do that?!” she snapped with irate bafflement, wondering quite how high her brother was. “Just no rumors. Okay?” Klaus childishly stuck his pinky finger out. Allison reluctantly pinky promised, although she was finding this lead up foreboding.
Nervously biting down on his lip, Klaus decided to just rip off the bandaid. “I know you won’t remember this, Claire...” Klaus briefly glanced over to Ben’s sorrowful frown “...but it’s kind of important to him that I at least tell you. He won’t shut the fu-“ Allison whacked him in the arm scoldingly, looking extremely offended. Klaus rolled his eyes, irritated that his sister really thought an infant would be able to understand a curse word. Peering back down to his titchy niece, Klaus just tried to pretend Allison wasn’t there. He’d lose his nerve otherwise. There was a significant chance she’d punch him, his siblings had a tendency to get mad when he’d talk about Ben’s ghost - especially since Allison was already so pissed at him. “I would call him Uncle Ben, but it just makes me think of that old guy on the rice...” Klaus lazily giggled, deciding to tease Ben about that from now on.
“Can you focus for one minute?” Ben droned with weary aggravation. Klaus dopily rubbed at his eyes, regretting those extra pills. “Anyway, he wants you to know he loves you very much, and it breaks his heart that he can’t meet you himself.
He said he’s thought of you every day since you were born, and that he’ll think of you every day for the rest of his li-“ Klaus wheezed, giving thin air an apologetic hand gesture. “His afterlife.” Allison silently wiped away her tears, trying not to sniffle. Ben definitely wasn’t a ghost, but it was still upsetting to imagine him suffering through that. She loved her deceased brother so much, it was incredibly difficult not to have him here. Ben would’ve been such a caring and supportive uncle. She just knew he would’ve lovingly read to Claire, passing on his love for literature. Allison wanted with her whole heart and soul for Ben to be able to meet Claire. “I hope I can meet you again, but I’m sorry if I can’t. I love you.” Klaus sighed gently and stepped back from the crib, bashfully looking in any direction but Allison’s. “Sorry I lied.” Klaus mumbled awkwardly, giving Claire one last forlorn look before following Allison from the nursery.
“Yeah, so am I.” Allison snidely muttered, unable to look past what he’d done. “Tell your husband I think he’s hot.” Klaus impishly requested. Allison snorted despite herself. “I’m definitely not going to do that.” Typing in the code to unlock her security gate, Allison huffed and grabbed Klaus just before he left. “You’re an asshole.” she grumbled, pulling him in for a big hug. Allison was unbelievably mad at Klaus, but he was her brother. The only younger brother she had left. At least she could still hug him... unlike Ben. Klaus hummed his agreement to her comment, not making any effort to claim otherwise. “He said bye too.” her brother whispered, which just set off her tears again. “Bye Ben...” she sadly responded, even though there was no way in hell he was a ghost. It was the closest Allison would ever get to Ben again, even if it was bullshit. She’d take it. “Seriously though, does Patrick have a brother?” Rolling her eyes, Allison lightly shoved Klaus away from her. “Just get out of here before I rumor your stupid ass into rehab.”